


Passage

by MarvellousPinecone



Category: Babblebrook (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Eva's dragon death, Existential Crisis, Gen, I'm sorry it's so sad, Immortality, Ruined relationship, Siblings, but like not the ordinary kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:09:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23861335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarvellousPinecone/pseuds/MarvellousPinecone
Summary: Everything passes.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Passage

**Author's Note:**

> For my baby Willow, because I don't think we appreciate her ehough.  
> That's what I doing instead of writing my course project my dudes. I hope you'll like it.  
> English is not my first language, so if you notice any mistakes (grammar, punctuation, misused words), please, do tell. I'm striving to be better!

The door to the little cottage in the woods was smashed to pieces. The protective spell insured that no one would be able to unlock it, but apparently it didn’t say anything about breaking. All the jars were shattered, all the herbs hung under the ceiling were scattered across the floor. There were words written on the wall with coal: “To Nightshade Witch, from unfairly wronged”. 

But all that wasn’t what Eva noticed first. In the middle of the room there lied the body of her dragon. 

Her dragon. Her dragon, who she brought up from an egg, who she nursed since childhood, who was with her, her whole life. Her friend.

She could still smell sharp scent of glovewort berries in the air. Eva took a few steps closer as glass crunched under her shoes. She still couldn’t understand it. It all didn’t seem real.

Eva kneeled beside the dragon and stroked her nose gently. The dragon didn’t move. Glovewort can cause very long and painful death in humans, but dragons die instantly, their lives taken away like a blown candle. So mighty and yet so fragile. So mortal.

In that exact moment it struck Eva with astonishing clarity. _Everything passes_. Her dragon would pass anyway. Today, tomorrow, in a hundred years - what difference does it make? She was still so young, but nothing makes you understand immortality better than death. Soon everyone she knows will die and only she will remain. Might get used to it now.

She pressed her forehead to the cold scales. Eva wanted to cry, but could only stare blankly with dry eyes. If Bella was here, in Eva’s place, she would scream and rage and try to rain all hell down on the murderer's head. She would destroy the world just for the revenge, just to drown the pain of her own broken heart.

But _everything passes_. Eva knew that this man will get old, his skin thin like paper, his hair like threads of spider web, and then he will die, his bones will be lying in the earth, pristinely white. Just like her dragon's, just like everything else around her. All _passes_ and all turns to dust, and the dust is white – deadly, hollowly, blindingly white - even the colour dies, in the end, leaving the world blank.

So what's the point? In revenge, in rage? In attachment?

Slowly, Eva rose to her feet. She was in a daze, all she could feel was cold (white-)silver void, like autumn mist clouding her mind. There wasn’t grief, not yet, and Eva was thankful for this postponement. 

She went out of the house to collect wood for a pyre. 

And when the streams of hot air from the fire blew her hair into her face, she wasn’t surprised to see them completely white. Nothing surprised her now.

With the same detachment Eva gathered her things and picked up a bottle of transportation potion. This would take her far, far away. She wanted to be as far away from here as possible, away from the deathly smell of poisonous berries and the pyre, away from Bella. She wanted to grieve and heal. If the latter was possible.

The potion took her to an empty forest who knows where. In a plume of smoke, she landed in soft grass, and as soon as her feet touched the ground, tears started streaming from her eyes. She sank to her knees, clutching grass in her fists.

She didn’t know how long she’d spent sitting like this, when a doe came up to her. Eva looked up. And behind the soft dark eyes that seemed so concerned and velvety fur she saw dry clean bone of animal’s skull, she saw fate that awaited this graceful creature. Eva could vividly imagine how the doe would wither and die, while the witch would sit here, unchanged. 

This vision sent Eva in a new fit of sobbing, and it scared the timid doe away.

Eventually she ran out of tears. She had to get up. She had to prepare for the night.

She ended up living in this forest for seven years. Nearby was a village where foreign people wore foreign clothes and spoke a foreign language, but she put an enchanted silver ring in her mouth and managed to communicate with them.

People turned out to be the same as in Harbington. With the same fragile bones and mortal hearts. Even in short seven years she saw enough deaths in the village. The forest died every winter too. _Everything was passing._ The only thing that was constant was her, her white hair and loss seated deeply in her heart. 

Eva refused this new revelation to turn her callous and cold-hearted. She was set to help her new neighbours. She felt like a pitcher with a crack. As her heart was being filled with joy, it would never be full to the brim. It must always give out. And she gave. In it she found her new fate. To create happy moments, however fleeting.

 _Everything passes_ , and she hoped that her pain, too, will pass.

Finally, she felt serene enough to return home.

She found her and Bella’s old house abandoned. Of course, Eva thought. Bella couldn’t stand remaining here. Eva could almost smell glovewort berries and smoke from all those years ago. The wall was still stained with coal, but the words were long gone. Her dragon’s burial place was grown over with grass. As it should be.

Eva didn’t make a fuss about her return to Harbington, but Bella learned anyway. And one day she came.

She entered without even saying hello, easily passing all the protection spells. Eva was already fairly skilled, but Bella had always been her equal in everything.

“I avenged you, Evangeline” — she said, reaching beneath her cloak. “I tracked him down. He paid for your loss”. And she took out a severed man’s head.

Eva couldn’t even find it in herself to be horrified.

_(Everything passes)_

It was just so typical for Bella. She thought that revenge would fix something, that blood would wash away blood and someone’s death would be an intoxicating potion to soothe the wounds. She was such a child.

Eva had learned a lot in her reclusion, she learned piece and forgiveness. But now the hurt was too deep.

“Do you really think I will ever be able to forgive you? The dragon is the closest thing to a child an immortal witch could ever have, and by your doing she was taken away from me”.

They looked at each other for a few moments that felt like hours of conversation. Young and fiery eyes met discoloured and ancient. There were a lot of things Eva wanted to say. _I asked you, I begged you for so many years to give up black magic before it consumes you, and look what happened to us_. And _You are a murderer, how are you better than this man, when you stand there dropping his blood on the floorboards of our childhood home?_. And _You are my sister, and I love you, but the pain you brought me is so great_. After all, they had always been so close, they understood each other perfectly.

“Fine. Indulge in your misery”, Bella spitted out eventually and sprinted out of the house, taking the murderer’s head with her.

Eva let out a shaky breath.

 _Everything passes._ At the end all things will be gone and only she will remain. And Bella.

Eva has to learn how to live with that.


End file.
